55 Days at Peking

I watched the old movie “55 Days at Peking” starring the National Rifle Association’s dear leader Charlton Heston. The movie is an account the Boxer rebellion in China in 1900, but specifically of the valiant defense of the foreign legations by a divisive group of Great Power diplomats and soldiers from around June 20th, when a German minister was killed by Boxers, to August 14th, when Allied forces take control of the city.

The movie was full of blanket stereotypes, weird music (presumably to give it a Chinese feel) and western actors speaking in a mechanical tone of voice to help us believe they are the Empress Dowager and her followers. Nothing more or less than common for a movie of its time.

To its credit, the Westerners don’t come across completely untarnished. In the first few minutes we hear some disgruntled Chinese say, “Different nations say the same thing, ‘We want China.'” The audience is also asked to respect the Chinese as Charlton Heston reminds his US soldiers, “This is a highly cultured civilization so don’t get any idea that you are any better than these people just because they can’t speak English.” It doesn’t help though that the next scene has Heston trying to save a Western missionary from torture and execution at the hand of Boxer rebels (who for some reason all seem to wave banners saying “Beijing” 北京 and “the capital” 京都). When he tries to buy the life of the missionary, our hero explains that the greedy capitalist Chinese will sell anything at a price.

Our American hero, as is often the case in these movies (and in reality?), is an impatient, aloof, but thoroughly seasoned warrior who doesn’t have time for the subtleties of diplomacy (that is left to the British ambassador). He only knows bravery, duty, and action and he gets very angry at the British ambassador when told that killing the Empress Dowager might not be a good way to resolve the crisis. I could see his eyes totally flashing, “Dude! But she’s like, EVIL!” More below…

The other diplomats of the great powers (with the exception of the American representative who says that the US has no interests in China and is thus above the whole affair) are all sniveling fools who eventually bow to the strategic genius of Britain’s representative David Niven, only to complain when things are not going well. Niven, while the most crafty and calculating of all, is also concerned and reflective, assuring us that he is taking a hard line to achieve peace through deception. After his son is wounded and his wife has a fit, we find him skipping dinner to lay on his couch and ponder over what he and Britain are actually doing in China in the first place. No answer is forthcoming, but he pulls himself together and personally joins Heston for a raid on a Chinese armory. The attack proceeds smoothly thanks to the hand chop karate action delivered by the Japanese member of the team.

Speaking of the Japanese, I was pleased to see that the Japanese are at least included. An American officer who wakes up a row of European soldiers by saying “good morning” in each of their languages, stops at the Japanese soldier and after a moment of confusion, just says “Good morning” in English. The Japanese actor who plays the head of the Japanese troops speaks great English, and has two whole lines in addition to his martial arts performance. One is to report on the exact military strength of the Allied troops in the legations (exhibiting that Japanese skill for precision and accuracy?) and the second is to saying something like, “Major, if you are thinking what I know you think I think you are thinking (that we should attack the Empress Dowager), then I have to say I agree with the [British] Ambassador” (perhaps showing that timeless ability of the Japanese to think in a calculating way?) Overall though, in the shooting of Heston and Japanese actor as “fellow soldier pals” the Japanese come across in the movie as cooperative allies.

There is a little “children out of place” theme in the movie. A half-Chinese girl who dreams of going “home” to America is eventually adopted by Heston when her American father dies, showing that he has come around from his original view at the beginning of the movie that she should be left behind in China with “her own people.” In a very different way, the two British children who grew up in the foreign legation are brought into focus by Niven’s distraught wife, “Do you think if a child dies in a foreign place without ever having been home that his soul doesn’t rest? I think it goes into limbo, an enormous empty Chinese limbo and it wanders there lost and crying.” Foreign place? Home? TCKs (Third-Culture Kids) all over the world must have sighed with exasperation when they heard this line.

The movie opens and ends with the triumphant marching of soldiers, the raising of flags, and happy songs from each country being played. As the troops from each European country come into the legations and victory is secured, joyful women rush out to meet them. The British (Indian troops), the Americans, the French, the Spanish, the Austrians, etc. were all there. I was very interested to see how the coming of the Japanese troops were portrayed a little differently. At the very end, after all the soldiers from European countries (plus America) have been embraced by their comrades, the music gets a little more quiet, playing a slightly oriental tune, and then, in the distance, through a cracked door, we see some Japanese marines march towards the Japanese pal of Heston. We can’t quite make out who they are until they stop marching, salute and then finally bow deeply.

Perched on top of the ruins of their defenses, Niven says to Heston, “Listen to them, they are all playing different tunes again.” Heston replies, “Well for 55 days we all played the same tune, ‘Kill the Chinese.'”

Ok, so he didn’t say, “Kill the Chinese.” But he should have. Then the camera should have panned out over the scene of a burning Beijing and we should have been able to see Allied soldiers rampaging about during their massive pillage of China’s capital. Instead we see the empress dowager repeating the phrase, “The dynasty is finished. The dynasty is finished.” If you listen really closely she is actually saying, “The horror, the horror,” long predating this line heard in the movie Apocalypse Now.